“It is to be noted that from the day of our arrest we were forbidden to write, or to receive mail, or inform our families where we were. On the doors of our cells was written, ‘Alles verboten’ (‘Everything is forbidden’). We received only the strict food ration of the prison, namely, three-fourths of a liter of vegetable soup and 200 grams of black bread per day. The biscuits sent to the prison for political prisoners by the Red Cross or by the Quakers’ Association were not given to us because of this prohibition.
“In the Fort of Romainville we were interned as ‘isolated prisoners,’ an expression corresponding to the ‘NN’ (Nacht und Nebel), which we knew about in Germany.”
THE PRESIDENT: M. Dubost, the Tribunal thinks that, unless there is anything very special that you wish to read in any of these documents, they have already heard the number of the hostages who were put to death and they think that it really does not add to it—the actual details of these documents.
M. DUBOST: I thought, Mr. President, that I had not spoken to you of the regime to which men were subjected when they were prisoners of the German Army. I thought that it was my duty to enlighten the Tribunal on the condition of these men in the German prisons.
I thought that it was also my duty to enlighten the Tribunal on the ill-treatment inflicted by the Gestapo, who left the son-in-law of Professor Langevin with his limbs broken. Moreover that is found in a testimony.
THE PRESIDENT: Certainly, if there are matters of that sort which you think it right to go into, you must do so; but the actual details of individual shooting of hostages we think you might, at any rate, summarize. But if there are particular atrocities which you wish to draw our attention to, by all means do so.
M. DUBOST: Mr. President, I have only given two examples of executions out of the multiple executions which caused 29,660 deaths in my country.
THE PRESIDENT: Go on, M. Dubost.
M. DUBOST: In the region of the North of France, which was administratively attached to Belgium and subjected to the authority of General Von Falkenhausen, the same policy of execution was practiced. You will find in Document Number F-133, submitted as Exhibit Number RF-289, copies of a great number of posters announcing either arrests, executions, or deportations. Certain of these posters include, moreover, an appeal to informers, and they are analogous to those which I read to you in connection with France. Perhaps it would be well, nevertheless, to point out the one that you will find on Page 3, which concerns the execution of 20 Frenchmen, ordered as the result of a theft; that on Page 4, which concerns the execution of 15 Frenchmen, ordered as a result of an attack against a railroad installation; and finally, especially the last, the one that you will find on Pages 8 and 9, which announces that executions will be carried out, and invites the civilian population to hand over the guilty ones, if they know them, to the German Army.